


Three Simple Letters

by ironicpotential, TaFuilLiom



Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: F/F, Missing Scene, Pride, Sanvers Pride 2020, post 2x22
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-17
Updated: 2020-06-17
Packaged: 2021-03-03 19:48:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,678
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24691054
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ironicpotential/pseuds/ironicpotential, https://archiveofourown.org/users/TaFuilLiom/pseuds/TaFuilLiom
Summary: The city was so quiet. At rush hour, there should be honking horns, shouts and sirens, people going to work, school, college. But there was none of that now. She closed her eyes and embraced the morning sun on her face. She could hear the shower splashing against the tiles, the whir of the coffeemaker, the birds sweeping about an empty city like a playground.And gunfire.
Relationships: Alex Danvers/Maggie Sawyer
Comments: 15
Kudos: 97
Collections: Secret Sanvers | A Sanvers Pride Event





	Three Simple Letters

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lifeinabeautifullight](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lifeinabeautifullight/gifts).



> Hope you like this, Cait!

**Day One**

The clock on the kitchen wall seemed to be frozen in place. 

She rubbed her palms together and paced, but each glance up brought the same time: 8:14. 

When Maggie picked up her phone it proudly blazed with a full battery and four bars of signal. There had been some wavering interruptions over the past three days, but today there was nothing that would stop the call coming through when the clock hit half past. 

Lieutenant Norton wasn’t even from the Science Department. His introductory email sent this morning at 7:02 was a brutal indication of how gutted their ranks could be. How many from her bullpen that day made it out alive? If not her lieutenant, then certainly not- 

She glanced at the clock. 8:15.

She huffed and grabbed her phone, shoving it into the pocket of her sweatpants. Then she initiated the ritualistic steps she had found herself following in the three days since the Daxamite Invasion: pushing back the curtains, opening up the balcony windows, and listening. 

The city was so quiet. At rush hour, there should be honking horns, shouts and sirens, people going to work, school, college. But there was none of that now. She closed her eyes and embraced the morning sun on her face. She could hear the shower splashing against the tiles, the whir of the coffeemaker, the birds sweeping about an empty city like a playground. 

And gunfire. Alien invaders. Her colleagues running for cover-

Her eyes snapped open. She tried to see the concrete, the sunshine, the birds swooping in front of her, but all she saw was -

“Hey, you.”

Maggie jerked away from the hands on her hips. She swung around to see a startled, fresh-faced Alex. 

“Damn...” Alex marveled, grinning, “What’s got you so jumpy this morning?”

“Lieutenant Norton is calling me this morning.”

Maggie’s jaw snapped shut after the remark like she hadn’t even meant to say it. Her girlfriend’s eyebrows lifted.

“Who?”

“He’s from the Gang and Narcotics Division.”

“The-? Oh.” Alex crossed her arms over her stomach. The realisation seemed to rock her immediately. She licked her lips and looked out into the quiet morning, morning sun alighting the pensive nature that came over her. “Quiet, again.”

Maggie looked out to see a single seagull arching up and circling back in the blue sky. “Weird.”

“Yeah.”

She couldn’t even savour the peace, the residual shocks of anxiety rippling through her stomach. She took out her phone. 

8:21.

“Speaking of weird.” Alex rooted around behind her and then presented her own phone. Maggie became fixated on a single drop of water which raced down from her still wet hair and along sinewy muscle accentuated by the sun. 

“Hey,” an amused Alex prompted, wiggling her phone until Maggie took it, “Look.” 

As Alex trotted towards the kitchen, Maggie scanned the email that she had brought up, noting the pride flags and bold rainbow colours. She recognized the logo. “You signed up to a mailing list for the National City LGBT Center?”

Alex looked up from the coffee machine, face flushed. “When I was figuring out I was gay I decided to try and get more educated on the culture in the city. Try to make more gay friends than the one woman I was falling for.” She flashed a grin over her shoulder as she reached into the cupboard for two mugs. “Sort of forgot I’d subscribed to their emails.” 

As she split the contents of the carafe into two mugs, Maggie read the email, feeling the sting in its cheery wording. “It’s supposed to be pride on Saturday.”

“Yeah. Honestly, I was really looking forward to it,” Alex lamented, clinking a spoon against the mugs as she stirred in milk and creamer. “My first pride parade…” 

The email listed times for the parade, featured acts, even drink specials at sponsoring bars. There was no mention of the Daxamite Invasion. No list of those lost. 

Were their offices even still standing or had they been another casualty of war? 

“This must have been automatic,” she muttered, pressing the back button on Alex’s inbox. The top message- unread- caught her eye. 

_ Still interested in these engagement rings?  _

Under the tagline, she caught a cheery marketing push:  _ We noticed you browsing these rings yesterday... _

Another automated email. She hovered her thumb over the message. When had Alex been shopping for engagement rings? She hadn’t presented Maggie with one when she proposed. She balked at the thought of a velvet box. Three days, so many distractions, and no answer. 

She couldn’t answer yet. Not while-

“Poured some for you.” Alex smiled, sliding a blue  _ “I Heart National City _ ” mug across the island to her. With its wide brim and thick walls that kept in heat just as well as a thermos, the blue mug had quickly become Maggie’s mug of choice whenever she spent the night, an occurrence that had become more frequent as their relationship progressed. 

Maggie quickly locked the phone, embarrassed that she’d even considered the invasion of privacy. 

Alex had been patient with her since the proposal. She hadn’t pressed, and while Maggie was thankful for the space, she knew that she owed Alex an answer soon. 

She set her sights on the mug and stepped towards the island when more sparking thoughts flashed into her mind. She had just made a cup of coffee when the Daxamites attacked. Now it was likely sitting there on her desk in the bullpen, ice cold and growing mold. 

If the bullpen was still in one piece. 

Her phone let out a wail in her pocket, its tones shocking in the quiet kitchen, alerting her to the reality of her limb-locked stature. She almost couldn’t bend her arm enough to lift her phone from her pocket. 

8:30. She swiped to answer, heart rate rocketing. “Hello?”

_ “Sawyer. How are you?”  _

Her back straightened, the low baritone from the other end kicking her instincts into gear. The call had been expected, but still Lieutenant Norton’s voice came as a surprise.

With a concerned expression, Alex swapped her own phone for the  _ “I Heart National City” _ mug. 

“I’m good, sir.” Alex tilted her head, a question in her eyes. Maggie nodded, confirming that it was indeed the call she’d been anticipating. At this, her girlfriend respectfully retreated towards the couch. “And you?”

_ “Mellow.”  _ Maggie tried to get a handle on an image of him. He was likely frowning, palming his goatee like she had seen him do when addressing his squad.  _ “Had a quick check around the structure this morning, some of it’s sound.”  _

She hummed in acknowledgement. The NCPD had been hit hard and fast, an enemy tactic to cripple the city’s resistance. The sturdy concrete building that housed her precinct hadn’t been made with energy weapons in mind and had sustained heavy damage. Pillars that had stood for decades crumbled in an instant. Stone to dust. 

It would take months to rebuild, but if portions of the building had been spared… 

“Time to come in?” she asked.

_ “Are you ready to come in?” _ He wasn’t her lieutenant, but with whoever had been lost, they were clearly amalgamating ranks. 

She stared at the faded heart on the mug, her own heart pounding in her ribcage. She imagined it as silly and absurd as the image, rocketing out of her chest in pulses like a Saturday morning cartoon. The absurd to drive her away from the dizzying spiral of her thoughts. 

When she didn’t answer, he prompted, “ _ No pressure either way, Sawyer.” _

His voice was gruff, like he didn’t quite have time for her deliberation, yet needed to show compassion. He was likely scanning a list of names, trying to determine who on the force was alive, dead, or shell-shocked. 

_ “Yes or no?” _ He was more insistent the third time, needing an answer. How far down on the list had he gone before he’d gotten to her name? 

She knew she had a duty to return to the precinct she had left to find her girlfriend and save her own life. Yet the thought of going back to that building brought a crushing dread down around her. Even as she tried to answer, all she managed was a hard exhale. And there was something else. 

The word ‘Yes’ was almost forbidden. Her tongue refused to move from where it lay numb between her teeth. She glanced over at Alex, who was sipping her coffee as she flicked through her phone. Was she reading that cookies-generated email about diamond rings? Was she thinking about the proposal, about Maggie’s lack of answer to that question? 

Yes. Simple. Three letters. 

But she couldn’t bring herself to say it. To returning to the precinct, or to the prospect of marriage. She cleared her throat, as if to dislodge the word from her dread and just answer in an affirmative.

“Well…”

She trailed off again. 

She and Alex hadn’t been living the past two days so much as surviving. Healing. Sleeping off the trauma they’d endured and trying to come to terms with everything. Alex had been distracted with trying to get through to a grieving Kara to focus on the lingering question, continuing to go without an answer. 

But there were more pressing matters. 

“I’ll be in,” she managed. 

_ “Good.”  _

While he ended the call, she kept her phone to her ear for a few more seconds, like he might come back and distract her from her still-pounding heart. But there were only birds. 

“You okay?”

Maggie looked over at Alex, chin set on her palm and waiting for an answer. Always waiting for an answer. She dropped her arm, feeling both hyper-aware and sunk in a daze.

“Huh?”

“I asked, are you okay?”

Perhaps there was one way to dislodge the word from her throat, Maggie realised. 

With a lie. 

“Yes.”

  
  


**Day Two**

Breaks squeaked as the car pulled into a parking lot. The air conditioning rattled, working overdrive to combat the quickly rising temperature outside. 

Maggie leaned back in the leather seat and lifted her sunglasses from her eyes. She stared into her rearview mirror, seeing the dark circles from a mostly sleepless night. In fact, neither of them had slept well. Alex had returned to work yesterday to find that the DEO had also suffered heavy casualties and the guilt of losing agents under her command weighed heavily on her. This morning, she had left before Maggie roused, leaving only a half full coffee pot on the counter with a note. 

With a sigh, Maggie turned her attention to the list she’d been given. Fifty names organized in two columns— just a fraction of the hundreds of National City citizens who were reported missing, human or otherwise. After a few seconds, the names began to blur. 

She folded up the list, shoved it in her jacket, and slid out of the cruiser. There was a small dent in the windshield, but it was one of the only cars in the precinct that wasn’t trashed, so it would have to do until they authorized vehicle replacements. 

She squinted up at the building that housed the Office of the Medical Examiner.

Her first stop.

The heat of summer disappeared as she stepped into the morgue, a chill settling around her, prickling her skin into gooseflesh and making her thankful she’d brought her leather jacket.

The heels of her boots clicked on the linoleum, announcing her arrival long before she called out, “Morning.”

“Detective Sawyer.” The Chief Medical Examiner, a hawkish, middle-aged woman named Dr. Tracey, paced up past the row of closed body bags and the columns of steel drawers lining the wall. “Good to see you’re alive.”

Her assistant, Dr. Dackerwitz, poked his head out from a doorway. “Maggie! Long time no see.”

Dr. Tracey was the stern motherly type— cold but efficient— with a fondness for her young apprentice, who was fresh from graduate school and still learning the ropes. He reminded Maggie of Winn, always ready with a pun. Together their knowledge of the alien community rivaled Maggie’s own, an unfortunate side-effect of the increasing violence against aliens that ended so many innocent lives.

“Hey.” She held up her list. “Got a minute?”

“A minute?” Tracey didn’t look up from her clipboard, scribbling furiously on a form as she replied with her usual dry wit. “I’ve got all the time in the world.”

They catalogued the bodies, compared names to identification cards, and scoured faces for familiarity. Only going through these motions did she get a sense of just how many were dead. Human and alien alike, lying next to each other on prep tables, stored away in chilled drawers. Their work carried them outside, back into the heat, where refrigerated trucks sat, full of the unfortunate souls yet to be claimed. 

“You’re kidding,” Maggie said.

“I wish I was,” Dr Tracey said, hoisting herself into the first of the trucks. 

It was tedious, grueling, and each name she checked off her list shoveled more guilt into the hole in her heart. 

Casey Reynolds from the Crime Scene Unit, recently engaged to his boyfriend of five years, whose own body lay back on a slab inside.

Officer Cortez, the rookie with big dreams and a bigger personality, who hadn’t been on call but still ended up in the rubble, face rendered unrecognizable. 

Mary Henderson, the precinct receptionist three weeks from retirement, reported missing by her husband and kids. 

She knew them. She worked with them. Now the stench of death permeated her nostrils, tainting their memory with the image of them slowly decomposing as Dr. Tracey and her team worked overtime to respond to this disaster.

When they reached the end, Dr. Dackerwitz set a hand on her shoulder.

“How many of them were from your precinct?” he asked softly.

Maggie bit the inside of her cheek. “Twenty-three. They were all in the building.”

Dackerwitz nodded, his own clipboard held tightly to his chest, affected by the scale of the tragedy despite his familiarity with death. “And the rest?”

Maggie waved her piece of paper, then left.

~

The center of town looked like every disaster movie she’d ever seen. With such a massive death toll, the President had ordered the military to assist with cleanup efforts. Each road leading downtown— the epicenter of the attack— had been cordoned off. 

As she approached a checkpoint, a man in fatigues motioned for her to roll her window down.

“Ma’am, what is the nature of your journey?” 

“I’m an NCPD detective, carrying out searches for missing persons on behalf of the precinct.” 

He adjusted his weapon. “Can I see your badge?”

His demeanor was polite but cautious, no surprise given the grim surroundings. He and his compatriots were all armed to the teeth, but the automatic rifles strapped to their backs and the armored cars rumbling through the streets didn’t phase her. 

Working with Alex and the DEO had conditioned her to expect such heavy weaponry in the field. 

“Sure,” she said, reaching into her back pocket and taking off her sunglasses. 

He took the badge, the metal glinting in the sun as he scanned her ID, checking the photograph against her face.

“We’ll need to call into your precinct,” he explained. 

She nodded, content to wait as he mumbled into his radio to confirm her credentials. She slipped her sunglasses back on and flicked through her phone, past reports on the damage and op-ed pieces warning of future attacks. She wondered if Alex was also counting her dead, leaning over bodies in the DEO medical bay-

“Screw you!”

Her head shot up at a man’s shout. On the other side of the checkpoint, a figure staggered towards the group of soldiers. They all stirred, hands finding handles of weapons as the guy ambled towards them shouting more abuse.

“Screw you! Where were you?” He growled, jabbing a finger into one soldier’s chest. “Where were you when those things came out of the sky, huh?” He swung at them and a second soldier grabbed at his arm, trying to wrestle him back as he continued his tirade. “How many dead? How many American lives were lost?”

Maggie peered through the cruiser windshield, the buckled dent centered on the man like a sniper’s mark. A third soldier assisted the second and the man was taken to the ground, still thrashing against heavily armored bodies.

“Detective?”

She looked up in surprise, having forgotten the soldier checking her credentials. He handed her badge in through the window and her hand felt numb as she took it from him.

“You’re free to pass,” he said, ignorant of the scene just behind him.

They moved the barrier for her to pass through into another zone in the city, but the voice of that man echoed through her head.

_ Where were you? _

She remembered the officers who died in the precinct. The auxiliary staff who hadn’t intended to lay down their lives for their fellow citizens. The bodies lying cold and dead in the morgue.

She’d gotten out before the worst of it— had likely jumped over their prone forms to grab her shotgun and fight her way out to the street. She had dodged debris, shots ringing in through windows, one thought on her mind: she had to get to Alex.

But how many had lay dying as she left?

How many could she have saved?

**Day Three**

The thought chased her, a news ticker running rampant throughout the day. Hour by hour, it followed her as she checked names off of lists and knocked on doors.

It crept up even as she shared in the joy of friends found; taunting her when she took the brunt of anger from family members of those lost. 

It lingered even when she lay in the bed she shared with Alex, the king sized mattress softer than she deserved. 

At night, she was haunted by visions of that day. She was trapped. Separated from Alex by thick plexiglass doors. As she moved through the precinct, Alex’s expression morphed from worry to horror. She pointed, mouth frozen in a silent scream, and Maggie looked down. Blood dripped from her hands, rippling the pools of blood that surrounded her boots. It seeped through her white shirt staining it red. It covered the bodies surrounding her— bodies that multiplied, growing in number each time she looked away. 

_ Where were you? _

A legion of the dead staring up at her with cold, empty eyes. Always there. Always with her. 

“I’m coming with you today.”

The phrase jarred Maggie from her reverie. 

“What?” She shook the last remnants of the nightmare away, her heart still hammering against her ribs like her fists on the plexiglass door. 

She wasn’t in the precinct. She was in her girlfriend’s apartment, standing in the kitchen with a bowl of cereal in one hand and a spoon in the other. Her blue mug was on the counter, but she hadn’t started the coffee maker.

“I’m assigned to patrol.” Alex lifted her radio from the bowl where she kept her keys, wiggling it around. “So I’m basically an agent on call.”

Maggie blinked down at her cereal. Her mind was still fuzzy, the last tendrils of her nightmare clinging to her like soggy flakes on the side of the bowl.

Appetite gone, she scooped the rest of the cereal into the bin and crossed to the sink to wash her dish. She ran the sponge over the geometric pattern on the surface, hands working on autopilot. 

“Hey, you okay?” Alex’s arms slid around her torso. She leaned in, nuzzling at Maggie’s hair, lips brushing her neck. “You didn’t sleep well, did you?”

She set the bowl and the sponge down in the basin, then turned until she was facing Alex. Concern was etched across Alex’s face, but she remained silent, waiting for Maggie to share. 

Alex’s arms were solid, grounding her in the present, yet still her doubts remained. 

“Do you think I should have stayed in the precinct?” she asked.

Alex held her in close, as if it was too intimate to have that conversation with eye contact. “No. You survived, you got to me, and you helped me break back into the DEO. We saved the world from invasion, Maggie.”

If Alex had said this just to pacify her, Maggie didn’t have the energy to challenge her on it. Her part had been minimal, after all. She played backup to a secret agent, one who was more than capable of stealth. Had her presence been anything more than moral support? 

Alex nuzzled closer, pressing her lips to Maggie’s pulse. “You know, you don’t have to say anything… but we haven’t really talked about…” She trailed off, tucking her chin over Maggie’s shoulder.

Whatever Maggie had been expecting that night on the DEO balcony, a proposal wasn’t it. They’d been dating for less than a year— hadn’t even taken their first vacation together. They still kept separate apartments. 

She wasn’t ready to grapple with the decision yet. She hadn’t had the time to stop and think about what it would mean to commit to Alex for the rest of her life— to say  _ yes _ . She couldn’t. Not when good people lay buried under the rubble of the lives they’d built. Not when so many of her fellow officers were still missing. 

Not when the guilt of living wrapped itself around her, turning the warmth of Alex’s embrace into something stifling.

Against her breast, she could feel Alex’s own heart beating. Short puffs of breath heating the skin of her neck. She was nervous. Expectant. 

Maggie was grateful that she couldn’t see the pleading look in her eyes. 

“I don’t think it’s fair to talk about it yet.”

It wasn’t fair that she could revel in an engagement, while Casey Reynolds was tucked away in cold storage in the morgue, the engagement ring still on his left hand, waiting for his parents to come claim his body. 

“No, you’re right.” Alex pulled away, nodding. She beat a hasty retreat through the apartment, all the way to fling open the closet and rifle through dress shirts. The speed of her flight left Maggie slack-jawed. “Should I dress like a fed or polo-”

Her voice was light, but Maggie had seen Alex bury her feelings with violence and scotch. The topic would simmer until ready to burst and eventually Maggie would have to face it. 

Now, work offered a reprieve.

“Polo.”

Alex looked over in surprise, a pantsuit dangling from the hanger in her hand. It was crisply ironed and professional, and normally Maggie had no objections to seeing Alex in those particular black pants, but Maggie remembered the anger seething from the man yesterday. How he’d lashed out at the soldiers, fists flying until he disappeared under a mountain of army green. 

If Alex wore an unmarked uniform rather than the suit that marked her as a fed, they shouldn’t be targets for the same vitriol. 

~

She followed the same route to the Office of the Medical Examiner as she had the day before. This time, when she climbed the steps up to the unassuming brick building, it was with a heavier heart and a longer list of names. 

She hadn’t completed her list yesterday and she’d been given a new one today, so she needed to step up the pace. For that, she was thankful to have Alex by her side. She handed the list to Dr. Tracey, trying to ignore the feeling of deja vu.

“Alex!” Dr. Dackerwitz jogged over, grinning despite the somber atmosphere.

“Hey.” Alex smiled, knocking her elbow to his— a strange scientific handshake that had Maggie rolling her eyes fondly. “How are you?”

“Some people still missing.” He scratched the back of his neck. “But I’m staying positive. Your end?” 

Dackerwitz was one of the few civilians who had knowledge of the DEO. One of the first reforms that J’onn and Alex implemented at the DEO was an increased partnership with the NCPD, and by extension, the Office of the Medical Examiner. Alex served as liaison to the Science Division, offering her expertise in the autopsy suite as well as coordinating alien bodies so that murders and suspicious deaths could be added to DEO databases. At some point Alex and Dackerwitz had struck up a friendship, bonding over science and scalpel technique. 

Their chattering faded to the background as Maggie looked around the morgue. Like the NCPD and the DEO, it was all hands on deck. Even the interns had been drafted in for overtime work, scouring personal effects for anything that would help identify a victim as someone’s loved one. 

Maggie couldn’t imagine what it would be like if Alex was missing. The panic that had shot through her as she fought her way to the alien bar had been awful, but at the end of it, she had been reunited with the woman she loved. She didn’t have to wait for the call from J’onn or Kara or Eliza to learn of Alex’s fate (because she would never have been the first to be notified). 

If she was Alex’s wife, however-

“Sawyer,” Dr. Tracey said, handing her back the page of names with red crosses beside them, “I have three of these guys.” 

Maggie eyed the list, tapping her pen on each red mark before drawing a line through the indicated names. 

“There’s also this.” In the palm of Tracey’s hand lay a plastic bag labeled with one of the names from the list - Officer Burley. “For his wife, I presume.” 

Maggie took it, the plastic crumpling in her hand. Wife. This was for his wife. 

She didn’t walk down the steps to her cruiser so much as tumble like a bag of bricks with each descent. 

Unfazed, Alex trotted after her. “So what’s next? Heading for a haunt search?”

Maggie shook her head, slipping the bag into her jacket pocket. “We’ve got something to do first.”

~

Mrs. Burley’s house was in a typical suburban neighborhood, close enough to the precinct to be a reasonable commute, but far enough from the city to have avoided the fallout from the invasion. It was eerie— seemingly untouched by tragedy. 

Maggie wished she were wearing her uniform to do this. It just didn’t seem right just in her leather jacket. She pressed the doorbell, straightening up as much as she could as footsteps echoed from inside. She spared a glance back at the cruiser hoping to sap a bit of strength from Alex’s presence. 

Mrs. Burley seemed resigned to the news as Maggie handed over the ring along with the information on how to get her husband’s body. There were no tears. Just a single sigh as the woman’s shoulders sank. 

~

As they sat in Maggie’s cruiser, Alex gazed out the window, a container of half eaten chicken nuggets on her lap. 

Maggie picked at her own dinner, pulling a grilled onion from between two patties and letting it fall back into the box. It had been a weird day. Working together, she and Alex had made good progress on her list, but this teamup lacked the banter they usually enjoyed. She just went along with Maggie’s plans, following her lead. 

Now, however, Maggie sensed that she wanted to talk. 

Before the invasion, this part of town had been bustling with people going to restaurants or the movie theatre, but now there was nothing but stretches of deserted concrete. With a click, Maggie tuned the radio to her favorite station to cut out the silence and settled back into the driver’s seat.

Halfway through the first song, Alex turned down the radio. “Maggie.”

Pinching a sweet potato fry between two fingers, she took a deep breath before responding, “Yeah?”

“I want to talk about it.”

Chewing slowly, she weighed her options. “Talk about what?”

“C’mon Maggie,” Alex stressed, moving the chicken to the dashboard as she shifted in her seat to face her. “You know I want to talk about…”

Just like Maggie, Alex seemed to struggle with acknowledging that she had, in fact, proposed. Unwilling to add another emotional bomb into the midst of the misery that was their current workload, Maggie tried to wave them past it.

“Look, let’s just drop it until this is all over.”

That sparked anger like a match. “And when is that gonna be? Weeks? Months?”

Maggie shrugged. “I don’t know, I just don’t think-” 

Fuse lit, Alex burned, her dark eyes narrowing. “Just say no.” 

“What?” 

“Say no if you want to say no.” Her tone was clipped. “I’m a big girl, Maggie, I can handle it.”

She whipped her head back towards the window, but Maggie could see her anguish in her reflection on the glass.

“That’s not-”

A rapping on Maggie’s left cut her off and they both turned to see a familiar face peering at them with a grin. They plastered on smiles and Maggie opened the door of her cruiser. 

“Brian, you made it.”

“So did you! I’m so happy to see you both!” 

They nodded as he prattled on and by the time he left, the tension had been snuffed out. 

Alex folded her hands in her lap, silence falling between them once more. 

“I’m sorry for yelling,” she murmured. 

“Don’t apologise.”

No, the tension hadn’t left. It had given way to something else: unease. She gripped the steering wheel and the car peeled away from the curb. 

They still had work to do. 

~

Maggie’s head flopped back onto her pillow in frustration as the covers rustled beside her. “It’s not- I’m sorry, I just couldn’t-” 

Alex shifted up and then deflated onto her own pillow, the moonlight streaming in through the window casting her face in shadow. “Babe, don’t worry about it.”

The reassurance rang hollow, the sentiment betrayed by Alex’s sharp tone. 

“It’s not that it wasn’t- it just wasn’t doing it for-” Maggie stumbled over the words, growing more frantic to explain as she felt Alex drifting further away. “It’s me who can’t turn my mind-”

“It’s fine.” Alex curled inward, wrapping her arms around her bare chest and refusing to meet Maggie’s gaze. “Honestly, it’s fine.”

Maggie focused on the ceiling, the grating awkwardness growing with her inability to soothe Alex’s ego and convince her that it wasn’t her fault. 

She was stupid to have initiated it in the first place, after the tense standoff in the car, but a part of her hoped that maybe they could just work through their frustrations with each other in bed and everything would be fixed. 

Now, she feared that the embarrassment rolling off of Alex in waves would drive a wedge even further between them. Her girlfriend was still relatively new to all this and the combination of a history of bad sex and the disparity in their levels of lesbian experience had left her with insecurities that would take time to heal. That was something Maggie knew when they started their relationship. 

She sighed as Alex rolled over, facing the wall. 

They needed to talk. She couldn’t keep Alex waiting without a response or an explanation forever. 

But everytime she tried to relax or focus on Alex, on their future, all she could think about was the seemingly endless columns of drawers in the morgue. Her colleagues resting among countless John and Jane Does. 

They were dead and she was here, stringing her girlfriend along because she just couldn’t express how she felt.

Celebrations of living didn’t feel right. Neither did responding to a proposal and being so jubilant about what could be one of the best decisions of her life. To say yes, to become Alex’s wife. 

And yet, she couldn’t say no. She couldn’t turn Alex down. Because where would that leave them?

She stared at the moonlit ceiling. It offered no answers. 

**Day Four**

The following day found Alex in her passenger seat again. 

She looked every bit the intimidating fed in her pressed suit, sunglasses perched on her nose in some kind of petulant act of rebellion against Maggie. It was absolutely a power move— Alex’s way of reasserting her dominance over a situation— and this time Maggie wasn’t charmed by the reference to their first meeting.

When they stopped for coffee, their usual barista wasn’t there. The shop itself was relatively unscathed, but that didn’t guarantee the safety of its employees. She hoped he was okay. 

The girl behind the counter greeted them, apologizing for the lack of vanilla syrup with an explanation about disrupted supply lines.

Then she moved to ring up the order and caught sight of the FBI tag on Alex’s belt. Her hands slipped away from the register and her gaze turned cold. Scowling, she turned back to grab a carafe of coffee and with her other hand hauled onto the counter, before dumping its contents over the counter and onto Alex’s boots. 

“What the hell?” Alex bristled, wheeling backwards. She squared her shoulders for a fight. 

“My boyfriend is in hospital because of what those aliens did.” She slammed the carafe back down, jabbing a finger at Alex’s chest. “Where the hell were you guys?”

Maggie grabbed Alex around the elbow, pulling her towards the exit. “Come on-”

She shrugged Maggie off, but didn’t stand her ground, storming out with her arms folded against her chest. “This is bullshit!”

Squinting in the sunshine, Maggie thought about the man who railed against the military. After that, she had fallen down a rabbit hole between missing persons searches. “It’s all over social media too.” 

The Invasion tore apart the city, revealing the festering wounds of public distrust of the government. Citizens cried out for accountability, for disaster relief funding from the capital. Pro-alien activists lashed out against the system that undervalued lives; anti-alien activists resented the fact that Earth welcomed aliens at all— calling out for President Marsdin’s resignation for her part in the Alien Amnesty Act. Over and over, she saw critiques of emergency response. Echoes of the same vitriol that man had spouted. 

_ Where were you? _

Alex paced the sidewalk, the coffee drying quickly into splotches that would likely permanently stain the leather of her boots. “We were  _ here,  _ Maggie. We-”

“I know, I know.” 

And she did. She’d been there when Alex ordered her team to the streets, directing them to secure perimeters and aid civilians. She’d seen her fellow officers cut down in the streets by laser fire as she tore past.

“We saved lives, we fought the Daxamites-”

It wasn’t enough. It would never be enough. If they had been more prepared or mobilized faster maybe they could have saved more. 

“The hospitals are full of people who disagree.”

Alex narrowed her eyes at Maggie’s rebuttal, but she didn’t fight it. Pro-alien sentiment had been on the rise thanks to Supergirl, but they both knew that the Daxamite Invasion would lead to a political reckoning, even if Alex was loath to admit it. Law enforcement threw its support behind National City’s resident alien, a symbol that— from the comments Maggie had seen online— represented the downfall of humanity. 

She knew the truth, but when they stopped at another coffee shop, Maggie purposefully left her badge and her raging girlfriend in the car. 

Alex took the wheel when Maggie returned, giving her the chance to study the list of names they still had to cross off. They would be spending most of the day in the suburbs, going door to door for wellness checks and talking to family members of those still missing. 

Maggie frowned as Alex signaled a right turn. “Broadway?” 

“There’s no traffic, nothing matters.” She gestured out at the empty street, still littered with debris as if that would explain her cryptic reply. Cleanup crews hadn’t made it past 16th yet. 

“There are more military roadblocks.” 

“So what?” Alex scoffed, “We flash a badge and go through.”

She leaned forward, ready to reroute. “It’s faster to go-”

“It doesn’t  _ matter,  _ Maggie.” Alex gritted her teeth, knuckles white as she gripped the steering wheel tighter. 

Maggie sank back into her seat, foot tapping against the plastic mat on the floor. She turned her attention to the list of names, searching for ones she recognized. Committing each to memory. With each day that passed, the number of dead increased. Her list grew longer as individuals were pulled from rubble or announced dead at the hospital and brought to the morgue. 

Alex drummed her fingers against the hard plastic wheel. “About the coffee shop.” 

Maggie hummed, trying to concentrate on her paperwork. She didn’t want to hash things out now. Not with so many names left unchecked. Not when she had so much left to do. 

She didn’t offer a verbal response, but Alex wasn’t about to drop this. “You feel bad for surviving.”

Her head snapped up, her words spitting out before she could get a handle on them. “What the hell does that have to do with what happened at the coffee shop?”

“Because you believe them. You agree with them.”

“Alex-”

The barista’s voice joined the chorus that had been haunting her for days. 

_ Where were you?  _

She had abandoned her post. She’d run from the precinct, past citizens as they’d been cut down by the Daxamites. She’d fought back as much as she could, picking up a discarded energy gun when her shotgun had run out of shells, but ultimately she had run. 

She made it to safety, to Alex. 

Alex, who simmered with fury, with a kind of desperation Maggie associates with Kara being in danger. 

“Do you know how it felt, waiting in that bar, thinking about how our phone cut off.” She spat out each word, voice shaking. “Thinking you were dead.”

Maggie’s heart plummeted. “Did you only propose out of fear I could have died?”

That hadn’t even crossed her mind. And now it was out in the open between them like an existential alarm bell. Alex physically recoiled, as if she was about to pull the steering wheel from the dashboard and use it to protect herself. 

“I told you that you could say no, Maggie.” The reminder was hard. Every word a weapon to warn off a further probing. But Maggie had a lead and she couldn’t be waylaid. 

Because so far, she had believed the problem was saying yes. She couldn’t say yes without feeling guilty about all the cops, civilians, aliens who didn’t make it out of the Invasion. How could she celebrate a happy watershed in her relationship, in her life, when there was no one to share the news with? Kara had turned away, J’onn was stuck into work, and as for Maggie’s colleagues - 

But as they cruised through empty National City intersections, Maggie realised she couldn’t say no, either. Because a proposal prompted by the fear of death was not sincere, not planned, not thought through. It was desperation. And no one could build a marriage on that. 

Alex’s voice rose again, caught between frustration and an obvious fear of rejection. “Just be an adult and tell me. I can handle it.”

But Maggie wasn’t sure she could. Where did they go from there? From, no, I don’t want to marry you. She’d already seen how a wounded Alex lashed out from the first rejection. And barely a week since losing Mon El, Kara had closed off into a cold, unrecognisable creature of grief. Would Alex become the same?

And then, abruptly cutting off her thoughts, Alex grew tired of the lack of reply. 

“You know what-”

Alex brought the car to a hard stop, hurtling Maggie forward until the sea belt cut into her chest. She clicked the button to unbuckle, mouth twisted into a scowl. 

“You aren’t ready to have this conversation and I shouldn’t have pushed it.”

“Wait, Alex-”

The car door slammed shut, cutting Maggie off. She watched as Alex stormed across an empty plaza, into a side street where she’d surely call for a Super pick up. Not that she needed to be so discrete. The whole area was usually bustling with life, but now everything was shuttered. 

She got out of the car and shuffled around to the driver’s seat, sinking into the ripped leather as a blue and red blur streaked across the sky.

**Day Five**

The drive to the morgue was shorter from her own apartment and the five minutes she spent in the car weren’t nearly enough to clear her mind. She didn’t regret what she’d said to Alex, they’d promised to be honest with each other, but she could have phrased it more delicately. 

She handed her list to Dr. Tracey, struck by how normal the errand had become. A trip to the morgue in the morning, an argument in the afternoon… She shoved her hands in her pockets, surveying the room for the cheerful face of Tracey’s assistant medical examiner. To her chagrin, he was nowhere to be found. “Where’s Dackerwitz?”

Dr. Tracey’s mouth set into a grim line. “He found out his ex girlfriend was among the dead. Her body was recovered from rubble yesterday afternoon.”

Even though Maggie was used to the factual, callous way Dr. Tracey discusses bodies, she could see a bleedthrough of emotion. 

Maggie had met Dackerwitz’s ex. She was a public defender and occasionally she’d be the one cross-examining Maggie on the witness stand whenever she had to give testimony in court. They’d been good together, but both had incredibly busy lives. 

A pit formed in her stomach as she remembered Alex telling her about how afraid she had been when their call cut off. How relieved she had looked when she’d run up to Maggie in the bar. 

She wondered if Dackerwitz regretted not giving it another go. 

~

She took the long route to her next destination, the ever-changing traffic patterns leading her through back streets to avoid the heavier areas of construction. Whole blocks were closed off, windows boarded up to prevent looting, but amidst the chaos, she could see neighbors helping each other repaint walls and bringing each other supplies. Even though public sentiment was charged, it heartened her to see the citizens of National City banding together to rebuild. 

As she drove, she spotted an old colleague sweeping the pavement in front of a church. They’d been rookies together, both wanting to make the world a better place for marginalized communities; but while she quickly rose through the ranks to become a detective, he left to become a priest. 

Her parents had been deeply religious and her childhood Sundays were spent sitting in the pew beside her father, trying not to fall asleep. As an adult, her trips to church were out of obligation. Funerals.  _ Weddings. _ After her parents hurled bible verses at her while she pleaded with them to reconsider kicking her out, organized religion hadn’t held much appeal. She preferred to spend her Sunday mornings working or volunteering or kissing her very gay girlfriend. 

The next few months would likely bring her back to church as her fellow officers and friends would be laid to rest. Guilt bubbled up in her gut once more, stomach twisting as their faces swam through her mind. Bodies bloodied and bruised, scattered across the precinct, falling around her. Their screams echoing, mingling with Alex’s words. 

The proposal had been spur of the moment. Alex hadn’t even had a ring. How could she know for sure that Alex meant it? That she wouldn’t regret asking weeks- months- years down the line?

The cruiser screeched to a stop. 

“Detective Sawyer.” Father Riley leaned his broom against a wall that bore scorch marks, greeting her with a smile as she climbed out of the car. 

“Father.” 

She followed him through a crumbling door frame, supported by large wooden beams. “It’s ridiculous that of everything they could have destroyed, the altar, the seats, the stations…” He placed his hands on his hips, observing the intact confession box. “This still stands.”

Maggie marveled at its ornately cut mahogany. How many times had people used this to expel themselves of sin and cleanse their souls? Or, more likely, clear their heads. “Lucky. I’m having a crisis of faith.”

She felt ridiculous crunching through the coloured stained glass, the splintered door creaking as she opened it. She took her seat in the confessional, the back of her head resting against the wood, closing her eyes as she waited for the curtain to slide open.

“I won’t beat around the bush.” She stared down at her hands, clasped in her lap. “My girlfriend asked me to marry her.”

Silence, and then, Father Riley. “And what did you say?”

“Nothing.”

“Nothing?”

“Not yes or no just…” She sighed. The air in the confessional was stale, the walls too close. “Nothing.”

“Do you want to marry her?” Wood creaked from the other side of the wall as Father Riley shifted, thoughtful. 

“I don’t…know.”

“Do you love her?”

“Yes.”

“So what’s holding you back?”

She could say it was too soon, but life constantly reminded her of one important lesson: that it was too short. Still, indecision, guilt and hesitance persevered. 

She knew without a doubt that she loved Alex. If there was ever going to be a woman that she could envision standing with her at an altar, it would be Alex Danvers. But marriage was something to be taken seriously.  _ Til death do us part _ , that’s how it went. 

Father Riley hummed… then through the mesh she heard a click and with a flash of light, the pungent smell of smoke pricked at her nostrils. He toed open his side of the confession box.

She tilted her head, turning towards the small window, incredulous. “Are you smoking in God’s House?”

“I’ve been sweeping for two hours, I don’t think even He could deny me that vice.” 

She snorted at the image of him taking a long drag in the confessional in his full priestly garb, which caused him to laugh. Soon they were both cackling at the absurdity.

He fell quiet after a while. “We’re having a memorial mass later, whoever can come down,” he said, “Will you be there?”

Maggie, who hated religion, who fought constantly with the images of her Nebraskan spectacled priest, of the bible, of mentalities of sin all her life, nodded. Alex would be off shift and she wasn’t ready to face her— not without an answer one way or another.

“Yeah.”

**Day Six**

The precinct was littered with missing posters, family members crying as they received relieving or devastating news. This made the sixth straight day on duty and her exhausted body was running on caffeine and sheer force of will. 

She had tomorrow off finally, but she still hadn’t talked to Alex. Last night she’d thought about trying to make up with her. A little pizza and some beer had historically gone a long way to mending things between them. But after attending the candlelight vigil, watching the tearful faces in flickering candlelight, her emotions were fried. Instead she had gone home to her own apartment again. 

She had forgotten how lonely it felt to sleep without Alex curled up beside her. 

Clipboard under her arm, she headed towards the parking lot, her feet like lead on the scuffed floor of the precinct. She was debating how many shots of espresso she would need to make it through the day when her elbow was gripped from behind, causing her to stumble. 

She whipped around, ready to give whoever it was a piece of her mind, but the annoyance subsided when she saw a woman wringing her hands together. “Please, will you help me find my son?”

Her heart sank. They had been getting requests for days, but they only had so many personnel and she was so, so tired. “Ma’am...”

“Please.” The woman was desperate, grief swimming in her eyes.

Maggie had a long list, but she couldn’t help it, she pulled a pen from her jacket pocket and propped up her clipboard. “What’s his name?

~

She knocked on the door. She knocked again. She had finally reached the last name on her list, but there didn’t seem to be anyone home. Not that she was terribly surprised. The air conditioning in the entire apartment building was broken and it was sweltering. She rubbed sweat and exhaustion from her eyelids as she rapped on the door for a third time.

Then, as she turned, the door creaked, suspicious eyes peering out. 

“Marcus Shelly?” she asked, double checking the name scrawled at the bottom of the list.

“Who’s asking?” His eyes narrowed, warily tracking Maggie up and down. “You’re not one of those aliens, are you?”

She flashed her badge. “I’m Detective Sawyer from the NCPD. I’m doing sweeps for missing persons.”

The door opened a little more. “Who reported me missing?”

“Your mom.” Maggie clipped her badge back on her belt. “She’s pretty worried.”

“My mom?”

“Yeah.” She confirmed. “She’s the one who reported you missing.”

“I’m not missing.” The door swung open to reveal a man in a tank top and shorts. She could see a flag tattooed on his bicep, the colours of pride fluttering in an imaginary breeze. The pride parade would be tomorrow. The rainbow email. The other email. Maggie was so tired that her thoughts and reality melded together. 

She gestured with her clipboard. “Well, you should call-”

He scoffed. “She threw me out three years ago.”

“Oh.” She didn’t really want to intrude, but she had seen the look on his face before in her mirror. Selfishly, she wanted the confirmation that she wasn’t alone. “For?”

He glanced at his pride flag, jutting his chin up a little. “Yes.”

She tried to reconcile this with the woman’s frantic grief. “She seemed pretty worried.” 

“I haven’t seen her in…” A bit of his bluster fell away as he stared at the stained carpet, remembering. “Since she was screaming about how disgusting I was.”

That sent a stabbing pain right through her heart. Marcus couldn’t have been more than 18, 19 years old. If he had been thrown out three years ago, it was uncomfortably close to her own history. 

She thought about the woman again, how desperate she had been. It was clear she had been crying long before she walked into the station. 

“I can give you a ride to the station,” she offered, “What’s left of it, that is.”

Marcus let out a chuckle. He shoved his hands in his pockets shuffling his bare feet. “I don’t know.”

She nodded, respecting his decision. She knew that burden of pain. If their positions were reversed— if it had been her mother trying to find her in the aftermath of a mass casualty— she’s not sure if she could make contact. If those wounds could ever heal. “Your choice.”

She started off towards the staircase, but didn’t hear the door close.

“Hey, Detective?”

She turned back wordlessly.

He seemed to hesitate, ruffling at his quiff. “Jesus. Okay.” He turned inside. “Lemme get some shoes.”

~

Marcus was nervous the whole way there, glancing worriedly at Maggie in between bouts of fixing his hair in the mirror, but the reunion scene finally broke something in her. A mother gripping her son like she would never let him go.

As she drove home in her cruiser she cried, not for her own parents, but for each individual on her list that wouldn’t be going home to their family, and to the family she wanted with Alex.

She wanted to say yes, but… 

The door swung open and Maggie trudged inside, expecting a night of leftovers and bad television. What she saw was Alex, sitting at her kitchen table, watching that cheesy medical drama she loved on her phone. She must have let herself in with the spare key Maggie had given her. 

Maggie sat down across from her, taking her hand, and they both smiled, soft and sheepish. 

“I’m sorry for being an asshole,” she started.

Alex shook her head, squeezing her hand. “I’m sorry for pushing you.”

“It’s been...this has all been horrible.”

She was drained from crying in the car, barely able to sit up at the table. Alex scooted her chair around the table until she was sitting right beside her, framing her face with her palms— cool thumbs on hot, puffy eyes. “I love you.”

They shared a few kisses, slow and tender, foreheads pressed together as they basked in each other’s presence. It had been less than 48 hours and yet it had been too long. 

Alex pulled back, leaning her elbow on the table with a pleased smile. 

“I was going to ask you to move in y’know. The night of the Daxamite attack.” 

As she traced the lines of Maggie’s palm, it reminded her of the fortune tellers who trace the M-shape and reveal when a person will marry. Ironic, she thought. 

“Oh yeah?” 

They had exchanged keys months ago, but they still both paid rent on opposite sides of town. 

“I was too nervous to ask.” A finger followed her lifeline, long and deep.

“So you proposed instead?”

Maggie raised an eyebrow and they shared a little snigger. It was so very  _ Alex _ to make a leap like that, but that courage was one of the things Maggie loved most about her. 

Alex sighed. “Yeah, I’m sorry.”

Maggie had been essentially living with Alex already. She had more than one drawer in her dresser and her favourite mug was still somewhere in Alex’s apartment. That would have been an easy yes, if it wasn’t rushed, if it hadn’t come on the cusp of death, if, if, if... 

“Look.” She’d had a heavy week, playing the messenger for death, bearing witness to so much sorrow. While grasping at her own happiness had felt selfish, and she hadn’t really had the brainpower or emotional stamina to properly investigate the possibility of the proposal, she decided to put things into a temporary state. “I’m not saying yes or no.” 

Alex looked up in surprise. “What?”

“Honestly…” She struggled for a second, and then laughed at how dumb it was. “I haven’t decided.”

Alex perked up from the table. “That’s not a no.”

Maggie also leaned down on the table, the exhaustion like lead in her bones. After fighting to find the right words, the push out a yes or no, or stop herself from fighting with Alex, she knew honesty was the only path forward.

“I couldn’t say yes because I keep thinking about those lists, all those faces, those people I left behind…” She pressed her palm into her forehead, squeezing her eyes tight. “Alex, they died in the station. The Daxamites overran that part of the city and they were killed. And I just...I didn’t defend them.” 

Maggie expected to hear a reassurance, but Alex just let the statements hang in the balance, so she continued. “And I just- I thought it was so wrong to- even  _ think _ about celebrating an engagement like that.”

“So why didn’t you say no?”

“Because deep down…” Maggie opened her eyes and stared into Alex’s, finding the same exhaustion, the same bleeding emotions that this week had pushed her towards. “I was scared you’d think no was no, when really it might be...not yet.”

Even as Alex’s expression bloomed with hope, her words were tempered. “Because it was sudden and you aren’t ready. Not in this...atmosphere.”

At the understanding, Maggie couldn’t help but slip in humour. “And we both know you don’t react well to rejection.”

Months ago, before Maggie had shown up at Alex’s door to kiss the girl she wanted to kiss, that would have stung. But now, they share a laugh and a tender look. 

“That’s not a no,” Alex repeated, lazily drifting her fingertips around her ear. 

“Ask me with a ring next time and then we’ll see,” Maggie joked with a grin. “For now, you can help me pack up my apartment.”

No, it wasn’t a yes. But it was something.

**Day Seven**

Maggie stretched her arms up, folding them behind her head. The sheet was bunched at her waist, sweat cooling on her brow. The stress and anxiety that had been keeping residence inside her had finally gone and her head was blissfully empty. 

The night before, they’d taken a ceremonial box of Maggie’s knick-knacks to Alex’s-  _ their _ apartment. They then spent the next several hours reaffirming their intimacy— a reconciliation that continued through to the next morning.

Alex slinked up towards the head of the bed, a smug look on her face. 

Maggie smiled. “So is your ego restored?”

Alex pressed herself to Maggie’s side, her head resting against Maggie’s breast. Her hair was everywhere and she sported a shit-eating grin. 

“Depends.” The wink she gave Maggie could only be described as saucy. 

She reached down to play with a few strands of red hair. “On?”

“Are  _ you _ satisfied?”

~

Eventually they were roused by the tandem growling of their stomachs and rather than order delivery, they decided to venture out. 

Hellfire had rained down on National City, but even though so many had been lost, life was starting to return to the streets. The citizens still had hope. They would rebuild. And one week after the Invasion, the city was already being reshaped to be bigger and better. 

The block at Q and 13th had been hit particularly hard. The mattress store that Maggie swore had been a drug front had been leveled. The rubble had all been cleared and the burger joint next door had taken over the space

“Oh.” 

Maggie turned to Alex. “What?”

Alex pointed to a flag in the window of the restaurant. “The parade would have been today.”

“So it would.” 

The permits for the parade route had been cleared months before and she’d seen the flyers posted at her and Alex’s favorite coffee shop, but with everything that had happened, she had completely forgotten about the National City Pride Parade, even with the email reminder.

They watched as a group of people drag chairs and tables from inside the restaurant to the now empty lot, transforming it into a makeshift beer garden. She spotted a familiar guy hanging rainbow flags and streamers from an awning with a couple of friends.

“Marcus!” 

He turned and grinned as she jogged across the street with Alex in tow. “Detective, hello!” 

“How’d it go with your mom?”

“Woah, well.” He shrugged. “Times have changed I guess.”

A warm feeling blossomed in Maggie’s chest. “Yeah? That’s great.”

“I mean, the apocalypse is kind of a band aid over a gaping wound but…” He waved a hand through the air. “Everything can heal with time, maybe.”

“Maybe.”

“Hey, you should stay for a few. I know you eyed my tat yesterday.”

Maggie snorted at his cheeky expression. Then she shot a glance over at Alex, who was eyeing a table near one of the red brick walls. 

“Well?” 

She shrugged. “No time like the present.”

~

Alex’s table turned out to be a large barrel and two unmatched chairs, and when the smell of barbeque started wafting through the air, everyone around them cheered. 

“Wow. Only a week after the end of the world,” Alex noted, sipping a pint of beer, “This is quite a party.”

“The gay community has been through more than one bad day.” Maggie thought back to the days of her youth. To the protests she had attended in college to fight for equal rights. To the first time she was beat up in high school for being gay. All the way back to that cold February night in Blue Springs, Nebraska. “We’re all trained in trauma triage.” 

They both offer silent cheers, draining their cups. 

The LGBTQ community had always been resilient. The makeshift bar for pride, with it’s bad karaoke and extravagant drag queens, was just a symbol of that resilience. 

Alex looked out at the crowd, dancing and laughing. “It has a nice college party vibe.”

"If this is a college party..." Maggie teased, leaning closer over the plywood board that had been placed over the barrel, "Think about the pretty girl you're getting to flirt with while some frat boy chugs a keg." 

Alex grinned over the rim of her cup. "Already better than any party I went to."

“Are my baby blue eyes deceiving me? Is that Maggie Sawyer?” A voice called out in a Southern accent that Maggie wasn’t sure was genuine.

“Sue P. Grill! Good to see you.” When she turned, she noticed the full drag— a long blue gown complete with a cape and hair high enough to scrape the heavens. “ _ Great _ to see you.”

Sue fit her hands on her hips. “I was supposed to be getting my own float this year.”

Maggie grinned. “Guess it wasn’t meant to happen.”

“Well, the show goes on,” she drawled, “And who’s this pretty bird of the week?”

Maggie blushed, both at the attention and at the reference to her string of ex-girlfriends. “This is Alex.”

Sue leaned over the barrel to stage whisper to Alex, “Listen Alex, you better take off quick. This player steals your innocence and won’t call back.”

Alex tipped her beer in amusement. “Well, I’ll keep that in mind, but I think I’m different than those other girls.”

Sue looked delighted, clapping Maggie on the shoulder. “Tell me you’re both staying for the show.”

“There’s a show later?” Alex asked.

Sue winked. “Girl, the parade may be off, but the pride is still here!” 

Alex had never been to a drag show before, so they stayed. By the time it started, they’d had burgers and more than a few drinks, and both were a little tipsy. When the music started up and Sue took the stage encouraging them all to dance, Alex dragged her over to participate.

Maggie had never seen her so confident outside of work or the alien bar. She was glowing, basking in the feeling of being out with her girlfriend and being  _ out _ as herself. And when Sue wolf whistled at them for being too handsy, Alex just dipped Maggie, kissing her until her head spun.

There was no hint of self-consciousness, no trepidation. They were in an LGBTQ space, surrounded by women who loved other women, and Alex only had eyes for her. 

“I guess I got my first pride after all,” Alex shouted, barely heard above the speaker beside them.

“Yeah, you did!”

The pure joy in her girlfriend’s voice forced the rest of the death, the trauma, the disaster zone of the city far away from her mind. She could only see forward, through hope, through love. And with that clarity, everything else fell away. 

Alex’s arms wrapped around her waist, her front pressed to Maggie’s back as they swayed in time to the music. Her lips brushed Maggie’s neck and in that moment, she knew what her answer would be. 

“Yes.”

“Hmm?”

Maggie leaned back, craning her neck just enough to see Alex, and repeated, “Yes.” 

Alex’s nose scrunched up in confusion. “What’re you talking about?” 

“Yes, I’ll marry you.”

Alex stopped swaying for a second, eyes bugging. “Maggie, are-”

Maggie pressed a finger over her lips. “Yes or no, Danvers?”

They stood together in a hive of activity. Of pride, of rainbow flags, party, singing, drinking and celebration. Of hope and love and life in the heart of a broken city. A crowd that paid them no attention, dancing and singing. 

Here, amidst all the revelry, there was no lieutenant, no dead cops, no civilians angered by law enforcement, no Daxamites, no emails or phone calls or bad news delivered to grieving family members. There were just two women desperately in love with one another. 

And Alex’s blooming smile in the flashing disco lights. 

And then, there was just one word. 

Yes.


End file.
